1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the technology of automatic installation and automatic activation of an application of a version necessary for data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Data form of a document file made with a personal computer and a word processor, and data form of a spreadsheet file is changed according to version up of an application program which is used to make/update the data. Therefore, there are many cases that data made with a program of a new version cannot be used by a program of an old version. On the contrary, there is the case that the data which was made with an application of an old version cannot be edited by an application of a new version.
In case of application of a word processor, data storing form is different due to a version of an application. As a result, there is the case that layout of a document cannot be reproduced with an application program of another version. Therefore it is necessary to convert data form using another application called a document converter. In addition, the usable object is different due to its version in case of spreadsheet program. Therefore, there are cases in which errors occur when reading data with a different version of a one program.
Furthermore, the facility program that a constant procedure called macro is described is attached in this kind of program. This macro-specification, presence of reserved word, for example, is different due to a version of the program. Therefore, macro concerned may have produced execution impossibility or an error when opening data file with a program of a version different from the version with which the data was made.
In networked society represented with Internet, there are many cases in which this kind of data file is exchanged via communication. Thus, it was a big problem whether an application program installed in one's computer could be applicable for the version of the received data.
Therefore, a procedure was necessary in case that treating the data file with a version of the application installed in the user's computer was impossible. The user, judges a version of the application that can be used, investigates an acquisition point of the application, and installs it on one's computer, after the user obtained an application.
In case a data file is given a different extension due to a version, the applicable version of the application program can be known by just referring to extension.
However, like a document form of “doc”, there are cases when the universal extension is applied even if versions of the application program with which the document was made are different. In this case the judgment of an appropriate version was difficult in just observing data file from the outside.
Therefore, in the worst case scenario, repeating the following procedure was necessary. A user should try to install an application program of various kinds of versions with cut and try and repeats opening the data file.
The present invention has been made to solve the above-explained problems, and therefore, has an object to provide such a technique capable of automatically installing an application program of a version optimally selected for a data file, thus eliminating a cumbersome version judging operation by a user, and automatically installing application program with the optimum version.